Most people, as they listen to the inspiring strains of "Rule, Britannia! Britannia rule the waves", feel a wholesome consciousness of pride and satisfaction in having the privilege of belonging to a nation whose sons have almost always been pre-eminent on the ocean; but few stop to consider what is implied by the expression "rule the waves".
We are not in any doubt at the present moment of at least one meaning of the words. Had not our fleet instantly asserted its supremacy at the very outbreak of the great war with Germany we should have found it very difficult to get along at all, either with the war or with "business as usual". Does everybody realize, even now, that the war forced us to try to do two stupendous things at once—to carry on the biggest struggle in our history and to keep going the biggest trade and commerce in the world? It is quite certain that if we had not been able to maintain our "ruling of the waves", we should soon have been in a state of commercial collapse.
But in the old days our claim to the empire of the sea was based on other considerations, and though nothing more important was at stake than what may be termed a question of precedence, our naval commanders, even in those periods when our navy was by no means at its best or strongest, were always prepared to enforce their claims by instant resort to arms. Strange to say, it is only since our great victory off Cape Trafalgar that we have abrogated a claim to an extensive watery kingdom, extending from Cape Van Staten in Norway to Finisterre in Spain, which for many hundred years we had fought for, generally maintained, and asserted in the most imperious manner. According to old writers on the subject, even the Saxon kings had claimed the kingship of the "Narrow Seas", which then probably meant what is now the English Channel. This, in the time of our Norman kings, was actually a channel through their dominions, and when, by his marriage to the daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine, Henry II eventually succeeded to that duchy, and extended his dominions to the south-east corner of the Bay of Biscay, he naturally felt he had a claim to rule the seas still farther to the south.
"The striking of the sail" (that is, lowering it) "is one of the ancientest prerogatives of the Crown of England," says an old writer, "and in the second year of King John, it was declared at Hastings by that Monarch, for a law and custom of the sea, that if a Lieutenant on any voyage, being ordained by the King, encounter upon the sea any ship or vessel, laden or unladen, that will not strike or vail their bonnets[31] at the commandment of the Lieutenant of the King, or of the Admiral of the King, or his Lieutenant, but will fight against them of the fleet, that if they can be taken they shall be reputed as enemies; their ships, vessels, and goods taken and forfeited as the goods of enemies; and that the common people being in the same, be chastised by imprisonment of their bodies." The same writer states that this claim was formally recognized and accepted in the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Edward I (1297) "by the Agents and Ambassadors of Genoa, Catalonia, Spain, Almaigne, Zealand, Holland, Friesland, Denmark, Norway, and divers other places in the Empire, and by all the States and Princes of Europe".
There do not seem to have been any definite limitations to our watery kingdom laid down: it is sometimes convenient not to be too precise. But the earliest claim was usque ad finem terrae, which might mean to the "Land's End", to "Finisterre" in Brittany, to "Finisterre" in Spain, or "to the ends of the earth"—all very different things. Certainly the Spanish Finisterre was regarded as the southern boundary in the seventeenth century, for in the Rev. H. Teonge's Diary, when chaplain in the Royal Oak, we find the following entry written after leaving Gibraltar for England: "13 May, 1679—An indifferent good gale, and fayre weather, and at twelve wee are in the King of England's dominions (Deo gratia), that is wee are past Cape Finister and entering on the Bay of Biscay".
Monarch after monarch asserted his right to be saluted by foreigners "taking in their flag and striking their topsail" when within "His Majesty's Seas", and the Protector Cromwell made the same claim on behalf of the nation. Our men-of-war had also to be saluted in the same way by our merchant-ships. Any neglect used to be summarily punished. Captain Pennington of H.M.S. Vauntguard notes in his Journal that on 6th September, 1633, he had "in the Bilbowes" (that is, fastened by the legs to an iron bar running along the deck) "Richard Eastwood, Master of a Sandwich hoye, for not striking his topsayle"! He does not say how long he kept him there, or whether he handed him over to the civil power to be prosecuted by the Admiralty.
Not only the sea but "all that therein is" was considered the property of the English monarchs. Foreigners were not allowed to fish without permission, for which they generally had to pay. This was relaxed under Henry VI, but reasserted later, and the enforcement of payment from Dutch fishermen for fishing in the North Sea was one of the prime causes of the wars between Holland and England in the time of the Commonwealth and of Charles II. For the Dutch thought they were strong enough to wrest the trident of Neptune from our grasp. They nearly succeeded, but not quite, and we find William III asserting our claim to sovereignty afloat just as particularly and definitely as any of his predecessors.
TEACHING THE SPANIARD "THE HONOUR OF THE FLAG"